


The Memory Of Skin

by CalamityCain



Category: Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCain/pseuds/CalamityCain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some encounters change us forever, long after we leave them behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Memory Of Skin

"My love, oh, I beseech thee  
Throw thy cloak aside to feed me  
Crimson rivers from your veins  
Crimson rivers feel no pain  
Your long red hair ensnares me  
Your warm red blood it calls me  
My red right hand shall take thee home"  


 **Wolf Song** \- Omnia

 

~

 

My tea has turned cold, and taken with it the last of summer warmth. Hardly do I desire the company of another, but this is one of those rare moments. A gentle sun hangs in the sky. I wouldn’t mind someone to savour its passing warmth with.

Carelessly I bite my tongue while chewing the last of a cookie. There is the tang of blood.

I am reminded of the forest.

 

_His hair is wild and dark with streaks of silver. His eyebrows – thick, long things that meet in the middle – arch over amber-coloured irises._

_He asks me devious and nonchalant questions that I refuse to answer. And yet the presence of his tall leanness, his animal scent, holds me rooted. Clawed hands pull down my hood, brush my lips. Then his face is bent over mine. The fire in his eyes burn me so I’m compelled to close my eyes. This, together with my silence, gives him permission to press his mouth against mine to open me up, to taste my untried tongue. The winter cold makes my hairs stand. I realise then that my shoulders are naked._

_I pull back, just in the nick of time._

 

The last three cookies in the jar call to me, reminding me of the softness of Grandma’s face in the waking light of early mornings spent by hearth and oven. My dear late Gram, whose wisdom exceeded that of my mother. Ma’s affection often manifested itself in quick anxious movements and insistent hard whispers. It seems her worry grew as I grew; the warm, solid woman I had known as a little girl became smaller, fiercer, yet more fragile as I inched toward womanhood.

She feared for me. In the end, she was right. And Grandma was dead.

 

_There is a fine layer of fur on his palms. He takes a peach from my basket without permission, and bites insolently into the dark pink flesh. Noticing my disdainful glare (and few convey scorn better with a gaze than thirteen-year-old girls), he smiles slyly, then gives a little apologetic bow. It comes with a courteously extended hand. A handshake of peace._

_I should have known better than to accept._

_Grasping my hand, he pulls me close and sinks his teeth into my neck. Not hard; more like a quick piercing, almost a nip really. What is more alarming is the hand that slips up my skirt and between my legs. I feel his knuckle brush that most sensitive spot – there is a rush of warmth. My gut is on fire. I hit him._

 

The memory of his skin burns my fingers, and I drop the cookie, watch it shatter on the kitchen floor.

Powdery crumbs slip between the fine crevices of the floor. I really should sweep up the mess, or the insects will get to it, and then I will be cleaning out their nests from my corners all the way into next year.

Instead I stand abruptly. I push back the chair too hard. It hits the ground with a loud crack.

My buttons come undone, then my laces. I stopped wearing bone corsets since I started living alone, so my breasts hang naked once freed of my undergarments. A soft sigh of wind slips through the ajar window. It breathes on my nipples, making them hard. I close my eyes and think of amber, of fire, of fur.

 

_I am running through the woods, a warm smear of blood cooling on my hand. His blood. I had never hit anyone with my fist before. My lungs suck in long ragged breaths. It is not healthy to take in the chill winter air so rapidly, but I need breath to run. To propel me as far away from my predator as possible._

_There is a long, thin howl on the wind. I think of the fleet footsteps of wolf-paws running alongside me. I try not to, but I feel him nonetheless._

_From afar I see the glow of Grandma’s house. Gram is a witch, say the townfolk; that is why she lives alone at the edge of the forest. It is why she collects strange fungi no one deems edible and preserves dead things in jars and entertains no one who is not sick or in need of her odd remedies. In fact, I am the only one she greets with open arms at any given time. Especially when I bring her fresh peaches and pears from our garden. I think about my abandoned basket, fruit scattered in the snow. Perhaps he will eat them._

_Or perhaps he hungers only for me._

 

My naked feet touch the earth, and I feel her growing cooler with the coming of autumn days. I walk. Then I run. I run toward the whisper of leaves and the rustle of secrets that never leave the forest.

Like my witch grandmother, I too live away from people. I am no magic-worker, however. Or am I? I’ve yet to test my skills at anything other than what I can see and touch. I believe in the ground beneath my feet and the roots that crawl beneath. They have yet to fail me.

Did my grandmother run through these same woods when she was younger? Did she feel the same thrill at the touch of falling leaves on her young, naked body? The forest brushing her in intimate ways and opening itself up to her the way it does for few others? To know things few know, to listen where few think to hear; that is what witches do. That makes them what they are – more so than any spellcraft or talent with potions.

I reach the end of open ground and the start of the forest. The trees embrace me as a friend. They know what I seek.

 

_I reach Gram’s door at last and knock urgently before realising it is unlocked. I know this, because it feels looser than usual and the rattle of the chain is missing._

_My mother’s quick, anxious voice is in my head, telling me in fierce whispers to turn around and go straight home. But my hands are freezing, and there are cuts on my arms from running into boughs during my mad chase, and fear is still coursing through my veins, and… The crackle of Gram’s hearth beckoned. Like a foolish child I am drawn in._

_A figure lies in bed. It looks strangely wooden, tense, not at all like Grandma. I know it is not her. Not her at all._

_Besides, I smell animal in the air._

_The figure opens its eyes. It might merely be the firelight, but they gleam a deep orange._

_“Hello, Gram,” I say, playing along as I inch slowly toward the heavy chest of drawers behind which Gram kept her rifle._

_“What are you doing, child?” it asks._

_“Just stoking up the fire a bit.” I reach for the poker to do as such. The chest is just behind me…if I could only –_

_“Never mind the fire. I’m feeling rather warm and feverish, anyway.” A hand emerges from beneath the blankets. “Come here.”_

 

As I run, the wind sweeps through me and lifts me until I can hardly feel my feet hit the ground. By now I know how to dodge sharp brambles and branches. I breathe deeply, searching the depths for the one who made me what I am.

It has been nearly fifteen years. Fifteen years since I was lost and found, and then struggled to find myself even as the doubts of others tried to devour me.

The wind is like a lover on my skin, but they would lock me away from it. In corsets and layers of dull colours. I would wear bright red again, red as the hood and cloak that was Grandma’s last gift to me, the garments I left behind with the last of my childhood. But red, they said, attracts the wrong kind of attention.

They were not entirely wrong.

I married once, was widowed, and never wed again. Why should I, when I had given myself away fifteen years ago?

 

_From the moment I take the strong lean hand – the hand that is not my grandmother’s – I make a pact without realizing it. Although, perhaps, my body realises it very well._

_“What have you done with her?” I whisper._

_He smiles. “She greeted me without fear,” was the answer. “Her skin, her senses, were so…alive for one her age.”_

_“Did – did she…?”_

_“She embraced me like a true witch in the end.” He licked his lips. “And she tasted like one too.”_

_The familiar smell creeps up my nose and into my lungs as he pulls me in and robs me of my cloak. What big eyes he has, when they widen with desire. The rifle is out of reach; I wait for him to attack. For the sharpness of teeth. Instead, he tastes me with his lips. No wounds – only hot trails down my naked arms, my thighs, my small breasts, trails that burn nonetheless._

_He strokes the cleft between my thighs. I do not hit him. I do not run away. After all, it is cold outside, and he is warm._

_Flesh and flesh complete each other. The fur on the underside of his human skin tingles, wanting to be let out. His lips find mine at last. And I let myself be swallowed whole._

 

There is a dark red hue to my plain, nut-brown hair that shines stronger in the light of early autumn. I have given up trying to find a shape to my tresses for some time. Now it is long, and wild, and clothes my shoulders like the garments I could never wear in polite company.

My husband – my proper husband – was a good man. In all fairness he was meant for a different kind of woman. A woman less temperamental, less like the wind and more like the timber from which he made his living. A woman who would have taken care of him like he took care of her. He was rough-handed but soft-hearted; a decent, honourable man. A good provider who made me feel safe. Except that safety was not what I wanted, though I thought I did.

(I still leave flowers on his grave. He was a good friend and companion, and Mother had been fond of him.)

My husband – my real husband – waits for me in the wilds. I hear him in the stirring of the leaves. I taste him in the air. Soon I will leave this skin behind until it is but a memory. My blood sings, and my body arches in joy.

I throw my head back to howl at the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing came about while looking at the Google doodle feature of Red Riding Hood (in celebration of the Brothers Grimm) and listening to The Cranberries' _Animal Instinct_.


End file.
